I don't think anyone is saying that trying to make money is wrong. It is very disturbing (to me at least) to say that you're funded only by donations while you're embedding affiliate links. People should have the utmost respect for their audience and the person in question has failed there.
I think that this consistent misunderstanding that she is "only trying to make money" is itself significantly more worrisome than her specific case.
I think it speaks very poorly of our profession that so many HN readers have a really hard time grasping the concepts involved with this story. It makes me question if this is simply an area of ethics that most tech-heads aren't very experienced with or if it is something more insidious, more along the lines of the Upton Sinclair quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
It is scamming, at least in my book. Of course not the one you go to jail for but still scamming. What makes it even worse is the fact, that she talks about the opposite and judge people for doing the same what she did.
